After Effects
by Fanatic Drone N
Summary: Oneshot. Sure Jack escaped to the surface and everything, but what happened after that? A little window into the unusual Ryan family through the eyes of a trained psychologist.


The following are excerpts from the personal diaries of the New York psychologist Dr. Fredrick O'Connell. Dr. O'Connell was famous around the city for the devotion he had to his career: Considered the 'Sherlock Holmes' of modern psychology, he was also known to conduct his analysis on people who were not his clients. These pieces of information were specifically mentioned in his will to clear up what he felt a vital part in the mysterious disappearances of people from around the globe in 1946, the crash of a seemingly normal passenger plane in 1960, and the vanishing and reappearance of little girls from the Atlantic coastlines in 1968.

While the children in question absolutely refused to divulge any information on their absence, they do display the strange quirks also noticed by Dr. O'Connell among the members of the Ryan family. The family also has special significance to the case, as Jack Ryan bears a strange resemblance to the international business magnate Andrew Ryan, who also disappeared in 1946.

The little girls, however seemed to be the main focus of the doctor's notes, their strange relationship with their father being the source of most of the interest. The diaries are as follows, unabridged and unhampered with, for the reader to interpret.

* * *

_June 8, 1964_

_I met a strange man at the supermarket today. He said his name was Jack Ryan. His name didn't seem as interesting as how I met him, though._

_I was walking down the aisle to pick up some cereal, a little girl slammed into my leg. She looked up at me and said sorry, right before four other little girls skidded into her in succession. Apparently they had been chasing each other around the store, and didn't look around the corner in time to see me._

_I just smiled, said it was fine, and ruffled her hair. Cute little thing, long white dress, a little bow in her hair. Looked like she was from Russia or something. The other ones didn't look much like her, and I thought they were just a group of friends until Jack stuck his head around the corner and told them to stop running into people._

_The one who ran into me, Masha, smiled and said, "Sorry daddy. I didn't see him."_

_Jack smiled knowingly at her. "Because you weren't looking?"_

"_Yep!"_

_He laughed, and told the girls to go and get some apples. They had another little race down the aisles, slower this time._

_Jack laughed again, and turned towards me. "Sorry about Masha. She likes running."_

_He's a strange man. He seems to be fairly young for a father of five, but there's a certain knowingness about him that suggests he knows far more than I, and he's not too happy about it. At first I thought he was their babysitter, and asked him as much._

_He shook his head. "All mine. They're wonderful little girls."_

_They came back with the apples, and Jack introduced them to me: Masha, who I already knew, Anna, Tasha, Julie, and the littlest one, Emma. The family is, well… Weird._

_How does a man who can't be older than thirty four have five little girls, all roughly the same age, none looking much like each other?_

_Weird or not, Jack seems like a nice guy. He bought them some candy at the check-out, and they all sat down nicely eating it while we talked. He's an accountant who lives over in Queens, and apparently works there too. He says he doesn't like being far from home, and only came over to my grocery store to pick up a brand of fireworks that they really like. Apparently, they didn't have it in his neighborhood, and he wanted to get ahead of the Fourth of July rush._

_He's a funny guy: He has this bottomless reservoir of jokes to tell. Some of them are new, some of them he's told so many times the girls moan when they hear the opening line. He drives a big, beat-up Ford Fairlane, with just barely enough room to fit all of them. He invited me over to dinner tomorrow, and I said I'd come. Don't have anything else to do._

_June 9_

_Went over to the Ryans' today. It was even weirder than yesterday._

_For starters, as I pulled into the driveway to the little green house, a water balloon fell out of the sky and hit my windshield. I looked up: Masha was in a tree with a bucket of water balloons._

"_Sorry!" She said, turning to wave to her father, and spilling the entire bucket on the car._

_Jack apologized to me and scolded Masha for climbing trees. I said it was fine. At least I got a free car wash out of it._

_Dinner was good: Jack makes some of the best hamburgers I've ever tasted. Catering to the whims of small children apparently does that to you. He always knows how to get them to come to dinner, though he didn't seem to do anything but say 'It's time to eat!'. Most girls their age, I'm guessing eight to ten, would probably put up a big fight or try to hide somewhere, but when Jack says it, they're there._

_They were scattered all throughout the house when I walked in, but only a few seconds after Jack told them to come to dinner, they were all sitting at the table, hands already folded to pray. During the meal, I asked Jack how he got them to behave like that. He shrugged and said they just listened. After dinner, when the girls were running upstairs, we sat in the cluttered living room and talked._

_Jack apparently was an immigrant from England who had come over in 1960. He didn't talk about where the little girls had come from, but I could tell how proud he was of them. His eyes gleamed when he talked about Emma's report card, or how Masha beat up the kid who had tripped her._

_He also had a few philosophical points to make. Hanging on the wall were quotations from various religious and political leaders throughout history, along with the Bible verse 'It is harder for a rich man to enter Heaven than a camel through the eye of a needle.'._

"_I've had personal experience with that one." He had said when I looked at it. Jack really did look like he did: He got quiet, and went outside for a smoke._

_A few minutes later, jack said he had to put the girls to sleep. I said it was fine, and I got up to go. I like Jack: He's a smart man, good head on his shoulders. I think we'll be keeping in touch._

_June 18_

_Went over to the Ryans' again, for Julie's birthday party. Me and Jack have fallen into the habit of meeting up after work for a sandwich an a drink. The girls go to a school that lets out half an hour after his work does, and in the summer they're usually out playing with friends until after he gets home._

_Jack doesn't have a lot, but he spends practically all of his spare money on the girls. He only has one pack of cigarettes a week, and he's trying to cut down, making sure to go outside when he does it to avoid giving a bad example. He wants to quit, but he says there's no real chance of him stopping. Either way, I was shocked to see the presents he got her: Big teddy bears, dolls, and a huge ice cream cake that probably costed more than all of their meals for a week._

_Julie was ecstatic, and thanked her father profusely when she opened up each present. I noticed that aside from the little family and a few of the girls' friends, no one showed up for the birthday. No grandparents or anything. This makes sense when you think about Jack being an immigrant, but they couldn't afford to send him a card? It's like no one in the world knows him._

_July 4_

_Me and the Ryans are pretty close friends by now, and Jack invited me over to their Fourth of July party._

_Masha and Julie were running around with sparklers, and Tasha, Emma, and Anna were setting off firecrackers in the driveway. I'm pretty sure what these girls do to my car violates the warranty, but I don't care. They really are such sweet little things, giving me presents, calling me 'Uncle Freddy'._

_Jack and I were out back, setting up the fireworks he had bought back in June while the girls played in the front yard. Jack had just set up the last one and called all the girls together when he realized they were out of matches. We knew all the stores in town were closed, but Jack said he had completely run out. The last few boxes he had saved for today had gotten used up by the girls. He asked me to go check if I had any in my car. I went to go look, but halfway there I remembered I had the car cleaned yesterday, and there wouldn't be any matches or lighters. I went back to tell Jack, when I saw him running away from one of the fireworks, which was hissing and already lit._

_There was no way Jack could have gone in the house to look for matches in the time I was gone. When I asked him about it, he said that he had gotten out his lighter._

_I _know_ that's a load of bull. Jack's been trying to quit cold turkey this week, and he doesn't even have those things in his house. Besides that, I'm a psychologist, and I can tell when someone's lying to me._

_Still, there was no other way it could have happened. I sat down with Jack and the girls and decided to forget about it. However, I could have sworn I saw a little flash of light flit between Jack's fingers._

_I don't know what to think of it, and I barely remember it now. After the fireworks, we went down to the park to see the big ones. Jack bought the girls ice cream and I got a gelato. He just rolled his eyes, and got a double scooper for himself. Jack did not seem to care that the gelato was healthier, and in fact told me that he thought people just ate it to feel more mature._

"_Ice cream for the elite." Were his exact words, right before the fireworks started._

_I've noticed that Jack doesn't really seem to care what people think about him. He said he was once in a place where people put so much value on their appearance, plastic surgeons were considered artists. I don't know about this mysterious place that will make Jack tell me some life lesson and then be quiet, but he obviously doesn't like it._

_July 17_

_Today I decided to take the Ryans' out to do something. They only go anywhere as a family, but I thought we might be able to squeeze them in between Jack's car and mine. His car had the back seat modified to hold four, but it is fairly uncomfortable._

_I asked the girls where they wanted to go. I suggested the movies, the park, the beach- And things got a little weird. They all flinched. All of them. Some more than others, Jack the most. I could tell there was some connection to the ocean they did not want to get into. I tried to cover it up, and suggested maybe we could go to the zoo instead. I talked about the lions, and tigers, and how the aquatic house just got a new sea slug exhibit-_

_Big mistake._

_For the briefest of moments I could see a look of horror on the girls' faces. I'd never seen anything like it. They were _disgusted_. Shocked. Horrified. Loathing something truly horrendous. They covered it up pretty quickly, but I'll never forget that look._

_We went to the movies instead._

_September 5_

_First day of school for the girls. I had a free day, and I thought I'd see them off. Jack's work is close to where he lives, so he can afford to kiss them all goodbye before school. Earlier on, when I had just met Jack, I came up with a crazy theory, which I rejected as too unlikely even back then. It was that Jack was some sort of criminal who had kidnapped these girls, so suspiciously different from him, back in Europe, and had brought them over with him to avoid the law. I rejected it at the time because Jack was so openly taking them around in public, and because I had just made up the theory to be a paranoid joke. I'm good at imagining situations like that (You can't talk to as many disturbed people as I have without coming away with something). Now, though, whenever I think of that paranoid little theory, I burst out laughing._

_There is no way Jack could have ever done something to those girls: He loves them so unconditionally, so plainly, blatantly obviously, and they reciprocate the feelings so much, that their bond is undoubtedly much stronger than even normal families. Every night he tucks them into bed, and checks underneath for monsters. He sits there telling them stories until they fall asleep. Even if they close their eyes halfway through the story, he reads it right through to the end. He just sits there for a few minutes, smiling happily and watching them sleep._

_I know this because I was over one night, and Jack offered to continue the conversation after he put them to bed. I couldn't help having a peek at the family, and when Jack noticed, he just smiled wisely._

"_You envy me, Doctor." He had said with a grin, discovering in seconds what took me an hour with my patients._

_I am happy with my life, but seeing these people so much poorer than me so happy makes me think of myself as an old Scrooge. I'm not married, I have never been, but Jack manages the family life perfectly well under the same marital situation._

_We finished our conversation, and I was about to go home when Anna walked into the room, dressed in pajamas and clutching a teddy bear tightly._

_Jack nodded in the way he usually did when he was in a familiar situation. "Bad dream?"_

_She nodded. Poor Anna looked scared out of her mind._

_It's weird, but sometimes the family acts more like fellow survivors of some great traumatic event than a father and his daughters._

_September 28_

_When I think back to the sea slug incident, I shake my head to think that it can not possibly top this._

_Me and Jack were having another one of our philosophical debates. Jack was an ardently religious man, and me, being an atheist, decided to have a friendly logical sparring contest. Jack agreed, and I have to admit, he was very good. I still don't know who 'won' but I do know what happened when I was trying to find inconsistencies in religious belief._

"_Well, okay, I get your 'Conversion' theory, but I still think its just the need for a cosmic father figure. Besides, aren't there some people out there who believe in this thing called 'Rapture' that-"_

_I heard a sharp inhaling of breath from everyone in the house. All activity ceased. Jack bit into his cigarette so hard that the top of it fell out of his mouth. He gripped the chair so hard I saw his knuckles go as white as his face. The girls all stopped what they were doing. Masha dropped a plate._

_The look of revulsion and fear after I had said 'sea slug' could never match to the loathing and _terror_ I saw now. Jack's pupils shrank to little dots. I thought I saw some of that light play across his fingers, but it was gone even quicker this time._

"_R-Rapture?" Jack asked, his voice in such a strange tone I felt scared._

_I hastily explained the concept to him and they seemed to calm down. The conversation was extremely awkward after that, and I wasn't invited back over for a week. When I was, I apologized to Jack for touching on a tender subject. He just nodded._

_January 14, 1967_

_Today, we watched a televised broadcast of the 'Human Be In' hippie event over in Frisco._

_Jack arched an eyebrow when the reporter summarized the Hippies' ideals, and made a face when he heard about the drug usage. He seemed to be remembering a bunch of people who acted similarly. He turned towards Masha, and said (False seriousness humorously reverberating from his voice): 'Now, Masha, I don't want _you _to go over there and act as foolish as that._

_Masha, 15 years old already, laughed, told Jack he had nothing to worry about, and changed the channel._

_I saw Jack stamp his cigarette into the ashtray. That was the last time I ever saw him smoke._

_Easter Day_

_Today was the first time in a long time when I found anything that reminded me of Jack's curious psychological traits. I was looking around for him, and the neighbors said he had taken the girls up to St. Patrick's for Easter, but services should have ended an hour ago._

_I drove up there, and found them just sitting in the pews. Looking up at the stained glass. I asked him if he wanted to come to my friend's Easter party, and he said yes._

_As we were walking out, I asked him what he was doing. He just smiled and said that he was praying._

_I asked him why it took an hour to do, and he just shrugged._

_Finally, I asked him why he was so religious at all, and he told me he had once known a man who had rejected the concept of religion, of higher authority at all. He said that the man had ended up so badly messed up, he ended up committing suicide so his enemies couldn't kill him themselves._

_I never found out if it was a Biblical tale, something he made up, or something that had really happened to him._

_March 8, 1968_

_Today I witnessed what happens when you push Jack Ryan over the edge._

_Jack and I were headed downtown to take Tasha to a doctors appointment, when suddenly one of Jack's tires popped. I was with Jack because I was a friend of the doctor's, and Masha had wanted to baby-sit for a dollar an hour._

_Jack got out, checked the tire, and then got me to come back with him. It was a bad part of town, but we were both fully grown men, and we knew that we would be out of there very quickly._

_As Jack was screwing in the nuts on the tire though, I heard a scream. I jumped up, and saw some criminal with his arm clamped over Tasha's mouth. The idiot had probably thought we had gone inside a building or something (There was a garage down the street), and thought he could get away with snatching a child. It was pretty noisy down by the exhaust pipe, so we didn't hear the car door open or the guy grab Tasha._

_The thug was turned away from us, bent over her, telling the girl to shut up._

_Jack's eyes filled with a sort of cold fire that genuinely scared me. He walked over to the man, quickly and purposefully, yet almost silent compared to the stuttering of the man, and the hum of the engine._

_Then, with an ease that strangely suggested he'd done this before, many times, he lifted the wrench he was holding, and slammed it into the side of the guys head like it was a watermelon._

_I ended up calling an ambulance and the police while Jack held Tasha. The officer who came to the scene took one look at the guy on the ground, and drove us to the police station The Sherriff asked us a few questions about the incident, and I was worried they were going to arrest Jack for manslaughter._

_The guy wasn't dead however, and the Sherriff said Jack had performed admirably. He made him fill out a few forms, and said he would handle the red tape. They let Jack go, and he never heard about it again._

_A few days later, I found the wrench in Jack's trashcan._

_August 14_

_Today, I was over at the Ryans' like usual, having a discussion about the current political situation down in Washington, when there was a knock at the door. I went and opened it up, and saw a strange young woman who introduced herself as 'Eleanor Lamb' there._

_She came in, and though Jack initially seemed just as confused with her presence as I was, he seemed to 'remember' her when she handed him a little thing that looked like a restaurant menu labeled 'Kashmir Restaurant' in big gold letters._

_For a second, Jack's face just kind of contorted there, and then he got up, told me she was a friend from work, said it was urgent and goodbye, and pushed me out the door._

_The next day I got a call from Jack to read the paper. I did, and was pleased to find 'VANISHED GIRLS RESURFACE UNHARMED-POLICE BAFFLED' adorning the front page._

_Jack had taken a peculiar interest in the big mystery, and had posted up whatever news there was about it on a special bulletin board in his room. He didn't just seem happy to see them back, he seemed _victorious_._

_I didn't see that Eleanor girl much after that day, but I did hear she got a job over in Brooklyn._

* * *

Doctor O'Connell did not donate any more of his journals, although his family says that he did keep writing them until his death in the 1990s. His family also had nothing else to say, except that Mr. Ryan had seemed to act rather strange when O'Connell's Irish cousin referred to him as 'Boyo'.

* * *

Wow… That ended up being a very long one-shot.

First and foremost, I would like to say that although I have never played Bioshock or its successor, I have read a lot into Rapture and the strange world under the sea. I've wanted to write a fic for a while (I was tempted to do a song-fic: '_Who lives in a city built under the sea? AN-DREW RY-AN! Obsessive and evil and crazy is he! AN-DREW RY-AN!')_

I eventually decided to write this because I was curious about the specifics of the 'good' ending, and because I always thought that Jack would be a bit socially awkward after Rapture.

Just a random fact to point out here: If Jack adopted the Little Sisters, and was bio-engineered to grow to maturity in two years, wouldn't that make him younger than his own children?

I had some trouble finding out the names of the Little Sisters: Masha was the only one I knew for sure, and I just made up Emma's name.


End file.
